Phishing Emails and Viruses

Lately, we have had an influx in virus removal from Microsoft© Windows Computers which has quite a few known ways to get on a computer.

In this blog, I will discuss phishing emails. "Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication."

How to spot a phishing email:

1. Check who the email is addressed to and who it is from? Is it you and do you recognize the sender? If the answer to both of these is no, then immediately delete it.

2. The subject of the email - Does it say something about forwarding you a scan file? Were you expecting it? - Again, if you say yes to the first and no to the second, then just delete it.

3. The attachement - Most email services block the sending of the attachements if they meet certain extensions. Phishers found a way around this by sending it in a zip file. If you were not expecting a file from someone, just delete it.

4. Look at the body of the message, the opening may be overly formal or just formal using Mr. or Mrs., also, look for if the email is asking for information from you. If it is, it is phishing. No company will ever email you asking you for your personal information or password. Now, back to the from address. Is the name the same in the from field as it is in the closing of the email? If the email meets any of this criteria, it is 99% safe to delete.

5. Spelling - Always a major one (and myself being a big person on spelling and grammer) I always look at these. If there are mistakes, especially on common words that we use everyday (such as everyday, being spelled everday) then you know that it is potentially a phishing scam.

If any of this sounds familiar to you and you went ahead and opened the attachment, you should give us a call to make sure your computer is not infected. Nothing upsets someone more than a slow computer with a ton of pop-ups making the computer practically unusable.

 

CEW

Archive of Windows Stop Messages: BSOD

I stumbled upon a great database of all of those nasty 8-digit hexadecimal Blue Screen codes. Many users search for the word minidump which often accompanies these Stop Message errors. The fact that a memory minidump occurred tells you nothing except what you already know — that there was an error. It is the name of the error condition and its 8-digit number that help you determine the actual error condition.

Using this listing should help us expedite the troubleshooting process for our San Diego clients.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.php 

Windows Vista will exit Mainstream Support and enter Extended Support Tomorrow: April 10, 2012

Microsoft officially releases the new End of Support report for their flagship operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista. Windows XP was widely popular and Microsoft has decided that all support for the now ten year-old Operating system will end in April of 2014. It has been in Extended Support for the last three years. Windows Vista is already beginning to show its unpopularity and will be entering Extended Support April 10, 2012; tomorrow as of this posting.

What does this mean for our San Diego Windows customers? When a new version of Windows is released, customer can utilize support tools such as: No-charge incident reporting, warranty claims, design change feature requests, and non-security hotfix support. This is part of their Mainstream Support Phase. Windows versions that are five years-old or two years after its successor has been released enter the Extended Support Phase which only includes paid technical support, security update support, and access to the web-based Microsoft Knowledge Base for that product.

What this boils down to is this: Windows XP will be shelved in 2014 which has been a long time coming. This date has been extended multiple times and Microsoft recognizes that it cannot continue to use man hours maintaining software that does not fully support current computer hardware. Windows XP users cannot properly enjoy the benefits of solid state hard drives, multi-core processors, more than 4GB of RAM , nor graphics cards with Direct X 10 or 11 support. Microsoft hasn't updated the Windows XP hardware compatibility since 2008!

Windows Vista is on schedule to leave Extended Support by 2017, so customers will still be able to get limited support until then. This is a good thing! There is no word as of yet when the Windows 7 Service Pack 2 will be released. Developers from older versions of Windows will be used to begin working on improving the already stellar Windows 7 or focus on new projects entirely.

 -- -Greg Mobile Computer Wizard  Office: 619-255-1215

Word or Excel 2003 continually asking for sku011.cab when opening...

Recently, a San Marcos client brought an old PC out of retirement to use in their conference room as a presentation machine, attached to a projector. Whenever they fired up Word 2003 or Excel 2003 documents, a prompt asking for sku011.cab would continually appear, along with a request to insert their Office 2003 CD for the file. They didn't have the CD any longer, and other than the annoying prompt, the programs appeared to work fine. Here's a workaround that does the trick:

Regedit (start menu -> run -> type regedit) Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> 11.0 -> Delivery There should be only 1 directory under Delivery, which is your DownloadCode (mine was 90000409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9). Select that directory. On the right side of the screen, right-click on CDCache. Change the value to 0.

Easy peasy!

Best Regards,

Kyle B. Hanson
Mobile Computer Wizard
619-796-4629 Mobile
858-345-0382 Office
www.mobilecomputerwizard.com